we'll put our roots down in each other's hearts
by eponnia
Summary: "Her heart is not yet stone." District Seven, two Victors, and the five stages of grief. [Filmverse one-shot]


**AUTHOR'S NOTE: The title is from "The Pine Tree" by June Carter and Johnny Cash.**

* * *

 _I lean my back against you_

 _Thinking you were an oak_

 _I knew the wind could bend you_

 _But I can't believe you broke_

* * *

There are no trees in the Victor's Village in Seven.

Johanna Mason can see the forest over the rooftops, but the closest she gets to nature in her new home is the weeds in the sidewalk. So, as with every morning she has a day off from being dragged to the Capitol, she laces her old boots, buttons up her plaid shirt, and heads for the trails. As the dawn starts to lighten the inky sky, not many Peacekeepers are patrolling the edge of town. Her breath white in the cool air, Johanna follows the trails until they fade.

And then she climbs.

The bark digs into her calloused palms and saps runs between her fingers, but she keeps going until the branches are too thin to hold her weight. Her back against the thick trunk, legs hanging from either side of a limb, the eighteen-year-old watches the sun peer over the mountain ridge and refuses to think about her family's upcoming funeral.

But she has to come down eventually, and at noon easily slips past the Peacekeepers; the loggers they oversee don't draw any attention towards Johanna, too intimidated by their newest Victor. She heads home, eyes red, and as she walks up the path through the Victor's Village, there's a man on her porch.

"You were gone a long time today," Blight Jordan says, not looking up from the chunk of wood he's carving.

"What's it to you?"

Her mentor finally meets her hard gaze. "Did you eat at all today?"

"And why is that your problem?"

Blight sighs. "Answer the question."

She shrugs. "Not since yesterday."

"Starving yourself won't bring your family back."

Her brown eyes flash. "Shut up," she says through her teeth.

"Punishing yourself won't change what happened."

" _Shut up_."

"Johanna–"

"Get off my porch," she snarls, marching up the steps past him and slamming her front door behind her.

Later, she opens her door to find a basket of apples and a small hand-carved wooden wolf on her front step.

* * *

She thinks she's the last mourner from the funeral party until she hears footsteps in the grass, but Johanna does not turn away from staring at her family's graves.

 _Edgar Mason. Husband. Father_ , the first headstone reads. _Hester Mason née Juniper. Wife. Mother_ , announces the second. _Grove Mason. Son. Brother_ , is carved into the last.

She sees Blight in her peripheral vision, and is grateful when he doesn't put an arm around her or say something stupid and comforting and kind. They stand together in silence for a long time, and he does not comment when she furiously wipes away a tear that dares to fall.

"Snow did this, you know."

Blight doesn't respond.

"All because I wouldn't be one of his whores to the Capitol."

"He makes everyone pay, one way or another," Blight muses darkly.

Johanna hurls a stone at a tree and screams herself hoarse.

* * *

When she sits in her bathtub long after the water has run cold, she presses the heels of her hands against her eyes.

Snow has the power to kill anyone he chose, but Johanna knows she would sleep with anyone in the Capitol now if only he would bring back her family.

But not even Snow can do that.

* * *

She's hardly gotten out of bed in two days when Blight forces the front door open, and Johanna decides she doesn't care.

"I thought you'd killed yourself," he says when he stands at her bedroom door.

"I've thought about it," she mumbles. "I just don't have the energy."

"You really had me scared, Mason."

She continues to stare at the ceiling.

"Have you eaten?"

She snorts. "I'm sure you can work that out for yourself."

Blight runs a hand through his hair. "I'll make you something, then."

"I don't want anything."

"I don't care." When she doesn't reply, he adds, "I know you. You're not the type of person to just wither away."

Johanna finally goes into the kitchen with her hair not brushed and hipbones pressing against her skin, but Blight smiles as bacon hisses in the pan.

* * *

A couple of weeks later, Johanna answers her door to find Blight holding a dog.

"I thought you'd like some company other than mine," he says, the black puppy with a white shape that almost looks like an oak leaf on its chest squirming in his hands.

"Where on earth did you get that?"

"The dog of a coworker of my father's ran away and came back pregnant by a wolf."

Johanna raises an eyebrow as the eight-week-old puppy playfully snaps at Blight's finger. "And what does that have to do with me?"

"He can keep an eye out for you when I'm not here."

"This is _stupid_ –"

Ignoring her, Blight sets down the puppy in her entryway as she clenches her jaw. The wolfdog sniffs Johanna's toes as a grinning Blight shuts the door behind him, leaving her with the puppy.

"I suppose you're hungry, then," she finally says, and the wolfdog whines.

She fries more bacon and gives him half. But as she watches him eat and starts thinking of names, blood runs cold as ice through her veins.

* * *

That evening, she watches the windows of Blight's home across the Victor's Village until they darken, and she heads for the woods with the puppy under her coat.

* * *

The next morning, she opens the door again to see Blight.

"Where's the dog?" he asks, looking behind her as she stand with her hand on the doorknob.

"I left him in the woods."

He stares at her. "What?"

Her heart pounds. "I can't have anything to care about, even in the smallest way." She is horrified at how raw her voice sounds. "Snow will always take the things I love away."

She starts to close the door, knowing she should start ignoring Blight when he visits. She should push him away, stop relying on him, because Snow _will_ find out. She won't be able to handle Snow taking anything else from her. She could survive her district partner's death in the Games. She may eventually be able to move on from her family's murder. But she is getting too close to Blight; and then there's the fact that he reminds her of Grove, even if she won't admit it to herself. She won't be able to handle Blight's death. She _can't_.

Her heart is not yet stone.

"You can't push everyone away," he says.

"Yes, I can."

"People need other people. It's part of being human."

"I don't _want_ to need anyone."

"Johanna," he says, and her walls crumble.

They sit on the front porch as she cries into his shirt. After her tear ducts dry up, they share another plate of bacon and he leaves with a promise that she come for dinner at his house during the week.

* * *

Four years later, a numb Johanna comes home after the Second Rebellion alone.

She steps off the train, drinking in the familiar scent of the trees and the smell of the earth after a rain. She can't handle going back to the Victor's Village, not yet, so she once again heads straight for the forest.

Even though she relishes the feeling, it is still strange to be able to walk freely among the trees. This time, she scales the first sturdy Douglas fir on the edge of the tree line instead of hunting for one far away from town. She sits for hours, looking at a changed Panem and coming to terms with the fact that Snow can never hurt her again.

Even if he did kill Edgar, Hester, Grove, Cashmere, Gloss, Brutus, Wiress, Woof, Seeder, Chaff, and Mags.

And Finnick.

And Blight.

When she climbs down again, however, she sees a large black wolf with a white oak leaf-shaped mark on its chest watching her from a hill.

Johanna strides home, hearing a steady panting following her the entire way. Though she has to dig her nails into the heels of her hands to do it, she goes to the Victor's Village. Passing Blight's former home, she heads up the steps to her dusty, neglected house and pauses at the front door.

The wolfdog is still staring at her.

She doesn't have the motivation to eat, but she makes herself go to the stores of those who had remained in Seven during the past year and buys enough food to stock her pantry. When she returns, she hears something moving under her porch.

As she cooks bacon, she looks out the window to see the wolfdog standing in the middle of the square. Taking a piece of meat that burns her fingertips, she goes back to the front door and tosses the strip to the walkway. When she goes back to the kitchen, she sees the wolfdog licking his nose.

She tosses him a few more pieces of bacon, this time staying at the door as he eats, and says, "I'm not naming you Grove. Or Finnick. Or Blight."

The wolfdog looks at her in silence, and she slams the door behind her.

* * *

He comes back a few times over the next couple of months, and she tosses him scraps every time. One evening, her television is actually playing something other than an image of the seal of Panem, and she watches Paylor being sworn in as a legally-elected president.

Only then does she grabs the steak she hadn't been able to stomach and tosses it out the door to the wolfdog.

"I can name you now," she tells him as he eats, but he ignores her in favor of the steak. "What do you think of Oak?"

He doesn't acknowledge her at all.

"Blight would have liked you."

Only then does the wolfdog meet her gaze, his piercing yellow eyes locking with hers.

"Oak it is, then."

He turns and pads away silently through the empty Victor's Village, and Johanna manages a smile.


End file.
